Past the Point of No Return

Past the Point of No Return

Brace yourself and check out our colleague Ross Gelbspan’s blog today, where he has picked up a U.K. story about James Lovelock, the scientist and green guru who conceived the notion of Gaia. In it, Lovelock says that we have already done too much damage to the climate system to correct in time.

It’s a bleak, demotivating view, but absent the option to abandon ship, I think it points to a need for us all to redouble our efforts at bailing.

Previous Comments

I am an attorney in Mass. and a substitute teacher here in San Francisco. I am a member of many environmental groups, and have been reading, tracking, and printing out all the news and studies on global warming for many years.This is my first comment on any blog, and my first real experience at reading any blog.I went to Harvard College and Boston College Law School.For some time now I have wanted to do a global warming news hour, so I’m glad I found this website DSB. My research of all the stories to hit the news in the past 15 years agrees exactly with LoveLock’s hypothesis. I kept describing it to my friends as a logarithmic upward curve, or an uncontrollable feedback chain reaction. Now I see LoveLock sees it the same way.Our only chance is to severely reduce greenhouse gas emmisions, but the political will is not there. Certain studies have pointed to the start of a new geologic era induced by human caused global warming.I want to take the three volumes of stories and studies I’ve printed from the internet to the politicians who ignore global warming or dismiss it as a nonissue.In other words I’m a news junkie that self educated on the subject and wants to help stop global warming. LoveLock’s hypothesis rings chillingly clear to me. Best wishes to the planet, but I’m not too hopeful. Mark J. Fiore

many efforts at mitigation and disaster preparation are complementary. for instance, advances in solar and wind power technology serve us in either the thumbs-up or thumbs-down decision by the rest of the biosphere, as do zero-emissions HVAC, high-yield local agriculture, better battery tech, improved recycling, low-power computing, low-power refrigeration. water reclamation.

it is morally repulsive to me to hear wealthy, educated people talking about giving up, building arks. it is exactly the same casual betrayal of the majority for rich northerners to do this as it was to justify the enslavement of the global south in the colonial era, exactly the same division of life between chosen and garbage.

it wasn’t people who made industrial society possible. it’s been a long time coming. and the schooling, experience, wealth, the benefits of power, all of it is derived and financed by the hopes of people who are about to be thrown away again to ease the imaginative consciences of the ones among us who would rather be petrified than roll up our sleeves and work outside our preferred company.

Mark,
I have been thinking of you -Do you remember me ??? I was a student of the boston college MSW . so my son is going to Boston College in the fall and I thought about you. and now I see that you are in California-well I am in Southern California- Elizabeth

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.